What Are You Playing This Weekend?

It's been an Overwatch kind of week for me and my partner, which means falling in with an old favourite. I've always liked Zarya's versatility to weave in and out of fights, while taking advantage of the damage her allies take. Her ultimate also pairs incredibly well with others, and she's just an all-around great character. There aren't too many situations where you can't make something happen with Zarya, although she tends to lose her versatility a bit if everyone is relying on you and D.Va to soak up all the damage.

But that's for another day. Besides Overwatch, I'm still slowly working my way through Pokemon Moon. I've just completed the fourth trial, although I've gone and done something completely stupid. My Grimer had levelled up and got the dark move Crunch, and then instead of forgetting something crappy I forgot Crunch (and as it turns out, it's a move that you can't buy from a trainer).

ARGH. But hopefully I'll find a Muk in the wild with Crunch, and life will be good.

What are you playing this weekend?

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I'll be finishing up the last bit of The Last Guardian (glad it is over tbh, Trico AI frustrates me too much)
Playing through Resident Evil 7 at night, and Yakuza 0 during the day.
Man I underestimated how good resident evil 7 is, far exceeded my expectations (thought it was just a PSVR bias game)

Watch Dogs 2 (PC) - Wow Ubisoft did really well on the optimisation in this game. My 1070 gets 65-75fps on ultra with no stuttering or hitching. The amount of tweakable options for controls and HUD are amazing as well! I love how you can set 2 different mouse sensitivities for when you're on foot and in vehicle. Also, you can set steering sensitivity for keyboard when you press left and right! Finally, driving in a PC game with keyboard and mouse feels good! Game looks beautiful too and is very charming and funny.

Wasted my master ball on the first elite Tapu-pokemon (koko i think...)

I literally couldn't catch it with all my other balls - BE WARNED: after beating the elite 4 etc - you are in one GIANT cut-scene where you go straight to fight the Tapu! If you need to stock up on pokeballs/get a "catch-friendly" pokemon with sleep etc, DO IT BEFORE ELITE 4!

I'm about 40 hours in to a survival playthrough, so I'll give you some advice on mods I've picked up.

Don't alter the base experience too much. It can be really tempting to add a ton of extra stuff but it ultimately detracts from the accomplishment in my opinion. There are mods out there that strip everything that makes survival mode different to normal play, but even things like 'extra guns and shit' mods leave you wondering 'did I succeed because I was good or was it because the mod content made things easier for me'.

You may disagree of course, in which case don't mind too much my choices below, but if you want to clean up a few niggling things in Fallout 4 while still preserving the survival experience as much as possible, here's my list of recommended mods and why you should use them.

Note that these are all PC mods, they may or may not be available for PS4 and I have no way of really checking. That said, they're worth using if you can find them for your platform.

- Armor and Weapon Keywords Community Resource (AWKCR): A prerequisite for other inventory sorting mods.

- Valdacil's Item Sorting: An inventory sorting mod that requires the AWKCR to work. Really useful, breaks things down into a lot of different types that can be sorted on, and groups certain things a kind of category item (eg. 'Holotapes') that you select to get the list of what holotapes you have. Keeps a lot of general clutter out of your inventory.

(Edit: The above two are available for PS4 but are merged based on your DLC. Look for Armor and Weapon Keywords and it should come up, select the one that best suits your needs.)

- Sleep or Save: This one is a little thing that makes a huge difference. In survival you can't save unless you sleep in a bed, but if you don't sleep at least 3 hours you'll contract illnesses and have other problems. It makes no sense when you're clearing out the Saugus Ironworks and sleep in a dirty bed in the rafters for 3 hours while there are enemies still wandering around the place. This mod still requires that you use a bed to save, but lets you 'just save' without having to sleep as well. It keeps the spirit of the survival rule but removes what I think was a pretty unrealistic side effect.

- Colorful Survival Icons: Adds different colours to the survival needs icons to indicate their severity. For the water icon for example, green means you're a little thirsty, yellow means you're getting kinda bad, and red means you'll probably die soon. Not sure why this wasn't in the base mode to begin with, very useful.

- No Idiot Savant Noise: The Idiot Savant perk is awesome for leveling quickly and getting out of the very dangerous first part of a survival game. But the noise it makes when it triggers is awful. This mod ditches the noise. Not needed if you don't plan to take Idiot Savant.

- Shaikujin's Better warning for settlements being attacked: Important since in survival mode you can't fast travel. Instead of an easily missed flash of text in the top left when a settlement is attacked, this pops up a modal window in the middle of the screen that you can't possibly miss. It also pauses the game until it's dismissed so it won't mess with your ability to fight.

- Visible Companion Affinity: This is cosmetic and non-essential. It adds a percentage so whenever your affinity with your companion changes it will show the current affinity. So instead of it saying "Codsworth liked that", it'll say "Codsworth liked that (76.4%, +2.4%)". This one's really down to personal preference but I find it valuable.

- Home Plate Connected: I actually didn't end up using this one but I was tempted. It creates supply lines from all settlements to Home Plate in Diamond City, so it can share resources. It's completely bare bones, it does nothing else and the supply line won't even show up on the map, but it works. Worth using if you don't plan to use Hangman's Alley for your central Boston dropoff point.

(Edit: These mods are all on Nexus for PC but most don't seem to be on the official Bethesda workshop site so they may not be available for PS4. That sucks, but I'm keeping the list here anyway so you can keep an eye out in case they become available in future.)

I hate it in Mystery Heroes where you are trying to push home the payload or take back the control point in the last minutes of the game and your team spawns as Mercy, Mercy, Sombra, Symmetra, Mercy and Mei. For the love of God can't we have at least ONE TANK!?

Or when you are defending a final payload push and the opposing team spawns two Reinhardts and two Bastions.

Other than that kind of situation, I love Mystery Heroes, because you have the challenge of making what could be a very unorthodox combination of heroes work. You also get to practice playing different heroes in different situations.

That's one of things that sucks in Overwatch. You have a good match and it gives you that false sense of expertise and as your MMR goes up you matched with better players who just destroy that newfound confidence.

oh, i have no doubt that I am absoulutely crap. I'm a silver player, so I know I'm not that great and I'm also well aware that I am often playing with Gold and Platinums. I try to just have fun with it now, rather then be too serious.

I'll probably be replaying shadow of mordor and painting my hero for d&d. ALthough I should probably keep playing pokemon. I just got a cyndaquil from the island scan and turfed by magby for it. But it's super low level so I need to train it up.

Nice! What sort of paints are you using? I use a hodgepodge of GW/P3/Vallejo/Reaper (mostly GW). I'm painting Malifaux at the moment but usually I paint heroes for Pathfinder (mainly Reaper minis) or Anima Tactics.

I've got a couple reaper paints left over from when I helping a friend paint his warhammer 40k stuff, but I'm going out tonight to see what paints the local hobby stores have. Need a nice tan skin tone, royal blue for the cleric gear and a metallic grey for the armor.

Been dabbling back in WoW after a couple of months off, might try and gear up my rogue a little more. Otherwise, GR WIildlands Beta is go so we'll see how that pans out. Was going to continue on my Hyrule Warriors and Pokemon Sun playthroughs, but my 3DS is in with Nintendo for repair and I don't get it back until next week. =(

Will be playing some tabletop in the form of Pathfinder. Then, more Overwatch though I'm kinda getting burned out. Opened 30 loot boxes and have only opened 1 Lunar New Year skin. Really, REALLY want that D.Va one. Another 500 coins and I'll just buy it outright

Yeah, I've had questionable luck on loot boxes. I've opened about 54 boxes so far and I've got Reinhardt's skin, one of Mei's skins (legendaries) Mercy skin and Symmetra skin (Epics) and a bunch of trash. I'd like D.Va's skin, Winston's skin and perhaps Tracer's skin and Bastion's skin. I've got about 6400 coins at the moment, but I want to open some more boxes so I can save those coins for future events.

Yeah I burned myself by buying the Pharah skin from the winter event and then not even using it. Could have D.Vas skin if I'd not spent that 500. So far I've opened a Mei skin, a Winston skin, and a Mercy and Tracer highlights. I did open an awesome Sombra skin, but it's still not D.Va

Finally Titanfall 2 campaign, methinks! Destiny Taken King is done but my dude isn't high enough Light for Rise of Iron yet, so taking a break to get thru a couple other games. RE7 was finished earlier this week, so it's Titanfall's turn. So many first person views recently...

Still on my quest to polish off my WiiU backlog before the Switch arrives so powering through Twilight Princess (last night I finally got past the point I stalled at during my original Wii playthrough - the horrible horse and cart escort mission - so it's all new from here (to be honest I have very little memory of any of it haha)). Also might buy RE7. Maybe.

Story time! I went to an all-girls’ school. My friends and I had that special bond of closeness that apparently comes with synced-up periods and measuring the length of each other’s winter leg hair.
This, obviously, led to a brief era of trying to catch one of the others unawares with the most impressive, most unexpected spank possible. We’re talking sneaking up behind each other in the hallway and laying one down that made the earth shake. If I couldn’t read your palm from the imprint, you weren’t doing a good enough job.